Aircraft bird hit incidents jump by 52% in 2022, shows DGCA data

The Indian airspace saw a 52% jump in bird strike incidents in 2022 as commercial aviation picked up significant pace after the pandemic. According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), last year the country witnessed 2,174 aircraft bird strike incidents, up from 1,430 in 2021.

Not only bird hits, but animal strike incidents at airports also rose from 23 in 2021 to 36 in 2022, as per data reviewed by Business Standard from the DGCA.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI), which operates more than 100 airports across the country, said that the rise in incidents is due to the post-pandemic increase in the number of flights in 2022.

The total number of scheduled flights, domestic as well as international, in the Indian airspace increased by 32.29% in 2022 to 1.3 million, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Bird and animal strike incidents are considered one of the most potent threats to flight operations.

Earlier this month, an AirAsia India flight heading to Pune had to do an emergency landing at the Bhubaneswar airport after being hit by a bird.

Last month, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said that all measures have been taken to address the issue of bird hits and emphasized the need to keep areas around airports clean. “As far as bird hits are concerned, we have put in place all measures at airports, which includes the bird dispeller, sound guns, and other methodologies that will keep birds away from airport areas,” the minister said.

Scindia had also explained that birds come to areas surrounding certain airports as they are unclean. “It is not because they make their homes there, but more because of the fact that they are attracted to some objects in that area. Therefore, to keep areas clean and make sure that birds do not cluster around areas of transportation through which there may be a threat to airlines, it is very important for us,” he noted.

The government-run AAI told the newspaper that it has taken various measures to mitigate the number of bird strike and animal strike incidents in India. These measures include maintaining grass height at an appropriate level, removing garbage from the airport area, deploying bird scarers, using LPG guns, using spikes on elevated lights so that birds do not sit there, and removing termite colonies with the help of pest control.

The authority said it is also engaging with the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), various ecology sections of universities, forest departments, zoo authorities, etc., to study the bird and animal activities near airports so that the entities can give suggestions on how to curb their presence.